Rental Car Pickup in Paris - to Travel to Amboise

I would take public transportation to Orly Airport, and head out from there. That already gets you out of the city, and signage is very good to and from airports. For driving directions and times, I use Via Michelin.

Porte Malakoff by a long shot.

It's clear of the inner city by definition since the portes were the entrances to the city way back when and still pretty much sit on the city limits.

You could be halfway down the Loire before you got to Orly and turned around.

Porte Malakoff or Gare de Lyon depending on where you are starting from in Paris to get to the car. After all, if for example, you are staying in the 5th arrondissement, it would make no sense to go to Avenue de Malakoff to pick up a car. You'd spend more time going to get the car than you would save leaving the city. It is quite easy to get to the highway from Gare de Lyon. Even Avenue Foch is not bad for leaving the city because you are heading away from Etoille which I find nerve wracking but Foch is so close to Avenue de Malakoff that you may as well go to the Malakoff location.

Sorry for not providing more information regarding where we are staying. We will be in the 4th district - Marais - near Rues de Ecouffs and Rivoli with nearby Metro station St Paul (Line 1). Sorry, it has been 28 years since we have been to Paris and we need to re-familiarize ourselves with the layout of the city. Plus we have never driven in Paris/France before.

I just dropped off a car at the Europcar agency at Gare de Lyon. I would NOT use that office if I've never been driving in Paris before. You'll start in the bowels of an underground garage and then hit confusing, one-way traffic when you finally see daylight. Laura's suggestion to take public transit to Orly and drive from there what I'd do in your situation. Also, if you don't have a chip-and-PIN credit card, be sure to have a full tank on Saturday--since many manned stations are closed on Sundays and the automated pumps only take credit cards with chips.

As it is the closest to freeway A6A / A10 to Amboise, isn’t the Europcar agency at Porte Orleans not a better option? Has somebody experience with that?

The Porte d'Orleans agency is very small, in the lobby of a hotel. It is a sub-agency of the large one at Montparnasse and has a very small stock of cars on hand. When we used it, first we had to wait for the person who ran it; the hotel knew nothing about the doings of the agency. Then our car wasn't there but would be delivered from Montparnasse later; finally we were given a larger, more luxurious car. Porte de Malkoff, too, may be a sub-agency, or a stand-alone agency, which you can see on google streetview. In any case, after that incident, if we are picking up in town, we always call the day before to confirm that our car will be in stock and the time we'll pick it up.

Hi Dee,

I just returned from France where I rented a car from the Orly airport. It was a breeze to head to Amboise from there...no problem at all. If you need a suggestion for accommodation while in Amboise I can highly recommend Le Vieux Manoir.....amazing place run by an American couple....great location and impeccable rooms and a 2 bedroom cottage that I swear I could live in full time. Have a wonderful time....this is a beautiful area of France. I would be happy to give you any info on this area....send me another private message if you need additional info.

Hey, great minds think alike. We have a similar itinerary, though we want to spend a few days in Paris w/o car first before heading to the Loire Valley.
We thought of taking the train to Versailles or Chartres and picking up our rental car there. Is that a bad idea because those rental car offices are too small? Would Orly airport be better?
We haven't booked a Paris hotel yet so we are flexible about which Paris neighborhood to stay in. If we stick with our original plan, we'd stay near Gare Montparnasse as that is where the trains go to Versailles and Chartres.

We rented a car out of Paris airport and drove to Loire Valley. Traffic back into Paris was really bad and a waist of time. I would suggest take the train to Versailles and renting the car out from there.

Hello, This is Dee who posted the original topic.

When we were in Paris in early October, we had made arrangements to pick up our Europcar from the Paris Porte Malakoff office located at 145 Avenue Malakoff. We were staying in Arr. 4 near St Paul's Metro Station. When we went to pick up our car, that office was closed and there was a handwritten notice in French on the door. Fortunately we got someone to translate the sign for us. The office was permanently closed 4 days earlier. Of course, Europcar did not inform us even though they had our contact information. We walked with our luggage to the Paris Etoile Foch office to pick up our car. We had selected the first office because we thought traffic would be bad at the Etoile Foch office since it was near Arc d' Triomphe, but it was a Saturday morning and traffic turned out to be no problem.
We had the rental car for two weeks and returned it in Nice, so did not have to deal with the bad traffic going back to Paris.
We had requested for a car with automatic transmission and got the only one available: a VW Golf that used diesel. Don't know if renting a car outside of Paris would also result in the limited selection of (automatic) cars available .